The Story Behind Death Was in the Blood

Today on The Rap Sheet, I contribute “The Story Behind the Story” about Death Was in the Blood in particular and the Kitty Pangborn series in general:
I was in a period of reading a great deal of classic noir fiction. More than my share. And amid all the drinking and testosterone-informed shenanigans, I began to see her there, at the edge of things. A voice of sense and sanity (a feminine one, of course) in a rough-edged world peopled by men who’d seen too much and had paid too high a cost in a war years past--one they still carried around with them, emblazoned on their souls. 
Men like that, they’re good men, but broken sometimes. It can be as true now as it was then. We’re luckier now, at least some of the time. We have words for things; acronyms even. And we know that post-traumatic stress syndrome can do funny things to a soldier’s mind and heart. But during the first half of the 20th century? They didn’t have words for such problems back then. “He’s busted up inside,” someone might say. Or, “You mean that Theroux boy? He ain’t been right since he came back. There’s nothin’ wrong with him, you understand. But he ain’t been right at all.”
You can see the full piece here.

Meanwhile, as I understand it, copies of Death Was in the Blood are possibly trickling into a bookstore near you right now.

If you’re thinking you’ll be buying a copy, order it from your friendly neighborhood bookseller now, or pre-order it from your faceless online vendor. All of that pre-ordering or ordering is very helpful to small potatoes authors like me because it lets the people who control such things know you care. (Thus making future books in the series more likely.)

Comments

Nick Walsh said…
Excellent stuff Linda!

Nick (Burlap Stevens) Walsh

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